Abstract
Perception of pain in others via facial expressions has been shown to involve brain areas responsive to self-pain, biological motion, as well as both performed and observed motor actions. Here, we investigated the involvement of these different regions during emotional and motor mirroring of pain expressions using a two-task paradigm, and including both observation and execution of the expressions. BOLD responses were measured as subjects watched video clips showing different intensities of pain expression and, after a variable delay, either expressed the amount of pain they perceived in the clips (pain task), or imitated the facial movements (movement task). In the pain task condition, pain coding involved overlapping activation across observation and execution in the anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula, and the inferior parietal lobule, and a pain-related increase (pain vs. neutral) in the anterior cingulate cortex/supplementary motor area, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the postcentral gyrus. The ‘mirroring’ response was stronger in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus/superior temporal sulcus during the pain task, and stronger in the inferior parietal lobule in the movement task. These results strongly suggest that while motor mirroring may contribute to the perception of pain expressions in others, interpreting these expressions in terms of pain content draws more heavily on networks involved in the perception of affective meaning.
Highlights
How do we perceive the pain that others experience? There are many channels through which the emotional and sensory state of another person can be communicated to an observer
In an earlier fMRI study looking at brain response to video clips of facial expressions of pain [1], we found that observation of dynamic facial expressions of pain elicited activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the anterior insula, two areas associated with the processing of the affective aspects of the pain experience in the self [2], as well as with the perception of pain in others [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Observation and execution of pain expression The first main objective of this study was to test if areas activated during the observation of pain expressions are activated during the execution of pain expressions
Summary
How do we perceive the pain that others experience? There are many channels through which the emotional and sensory state of another person can be communicated to an observer. Vocalizations—such as “ouch!”, and gestures—such as a hand flinching away from a hot stove, are cues which can indicate that someone has experienced a painful stimulus. Another important cue, in situations where the painful stimulus is internal or occurs out of sight of the observer, is facial expression. Our earlier findings suggest that this mirror-type activity may be involved in the perception of pain in others, via an internal motor simulation of a facial expression [1]
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